Translator: Aurora Cont Reviewer: Robert Tucker
I'm going to talk about something that affects all of us,
which is how we use words.
To some extent, it's my thing,
in the sense that I spend my life talking about words,
trying to use them well.
And first of all, I have tried all these things on me.
The first thing I want to say is this.
We never think about it enough,
but language is the thing that makes us human.
We are the only animals that have the power of speech.
Think about the animals you have at home,
a cat, a dog.
You know well that the cat does not only say, "meow,"
the dog does not only say, "woof";
but the cat says a load of different meows,
the dog a load of different woofs,
but, no animal, no matter how smart it is,
can use a sophisticated tool like human language.
Professor Chomsky,
in a very light-hearted interview granted to Ali G,
who is the rapper invented by Sacha Baron Cohen,
replied to a question asked by the rapper:
Professor, but you have been dealing with languages for 80 years,
are you not tired of always talking about language?
He replied, "No, not really, because language is the key characteristic
that makes us human."
We cannot do without words,
yet, since we've had our mother tongue since forever,
it's basically given to us free at birth,
we never give it enough thought.
And yet, every word we choose has a lot of uses, works for many things.
The first thing we use language for is this:
we describe the reality that surrounds us.
Think about it, we talk about reality,
and decode reality,
putting in labels,
and succeed in understanding each other because we agree on these labels.
I could quote a famous sketch by Aldo, Giovanni and Giacomo,
that maybe you know, the "cadrega" [chair] one,
or "carega" [chair] for those from around Venice.
What goes on in it is that two people test a third
to see if they all belong to the same "tribe,"
"cadrega" or "carega" only being used in northern Italy.
So, Aldo, offered a cadrega,
takes an apple and says, "Nice, this cadrega,"
and the others then know that he is an "impostor."
So, we need languages in order to describe what surrounds us.
I'll point something else out for you.
As reality keeps changing, is in continuous evolution,
so language also keeps changing.
It is possible that we do not like it, but we will talk about it in a second.
We need languages to communicate, of course, with one another,
and as I said earlier, beyond just communicating,
language defines my tribe.
Thus, I identify people who belong to my own tribe.
We think we have moved forward from the tribal concept,
but it is not the case,
we are still extremely tribal as human beings,
and equally I identify people who are not part of my tribe.
Therefore, it allows me to identify "the others."
Think about the sketch I told you earlier.
Language is useful for a third very important thing,
which is maybe that which interests us more.
Every word we use is literally an "act of identity."
That is, I tell others who I am, I make a declaration.
When we really fall in love with someone,
we can be smitten by their physical appearance,
but what really strikes us
is the things they say, and the way they say those things.
Obviously, with language being at the very heart of people,
we fall in love with that,
with the deepest part of a person.
Often, indeed, we fall for unattractive people,
because it is not that important.
What's important ultimately is what they say.
Then, for what else is language of use?
Obviously, if I say some things about myself,
those words, I have to think carefully about them,
because what do I want the others to understand about me?
Do you never ask yourselves when, for example,
you have written a few words on Facebook,
made it a public post,
what others will think of you, reading what you have written?
I maybe then regret it, want to delete it,
but, as you all know, God, there's screenshots,
and even deleting is wishful thinking.
Searle says, "It is not possible to think clearly
if we are not capable of speaking and writing clearly."
So, the way in which we communicate tells others how clearly we are thinking,
how capable we are of linear thinking,
because if we think sequentially,
we can also express ourselves in an ordered way.
A bit like what Nanni Moretti said.
You remember it?
We should always take that line.
Of course, languages, all of them,
have many more words than those strictly required.
Let's take a look at the statistics.
Italian has from 300,000 to 1 million words.
It is hard to make a precise estimate because it depends on what you consider.
For example, dialect words,
do we consider them part of the Italian lexicon?
A person of average education, let's say at the end of high school,
knows about 35-40,000 words.
But we do not use them all.
We, in our daily activities, get by with about 2,000 words.
We hear a much greater number,
and so we get to know them
because, for example, the media use them often.
Words like "penitentiary," "meteorological," perhaps.
We have inherited an almost endless number of words,
and, I think, pretty well everyone senses quite clearly
that words are not all the same.
A word can be a kiss,
a word can be a bullet.
So, the easiest way to identify words
is to make a list of the nasty ones.
Just think that it is what is often done online.
I make a blacklist of "bad words,"
and if someone use those bad words,
I do not publish the post.
That post is censored.
But is it always like this?
Think about a word like "nigger."
Everyone cringes.
If a white person says it in an offensive way
in regard to an African American,
it is clear that it is a horrible word.
But have you noticed that, for example,
African American rappers use them in their lyrics to define themselves,
because it is a way of underlining black power.
So not even a "bad" word,
like "nigger,"
can be stigmatized a priori.
It actually depends on the context in which that word is used.
But let's look at a few examples closer to us.
[Finocchio] (fennel)
It could be a vegetable, fennel,
or an impolite way of referring to a homosexual.
Let's use it in a phrase:
I walk into a cafeteria and say, "Oh, we've got fennel for lunch today."
I'm referring to a meat dish that probably many of you like.
Fennel is good, eliminatory.
I walk into the same cafeteria, there is a table of LGBT activists,
"Oh, we've got fennel for lunch today."
Same phrase.
But what changes?
The communicative purpose.
So, what do I do? I flag a priori the word "fennel" because it is negative?
No, because doing this, I might censor half of my vocabulary.
Cagna (female dog).
"Cagna," over the years,
has assumed a further meaning,
that maybe you know,
because it became famous thanks also to the television series,
the one before "poor actress,"
and then, indeed, used negatively towards women.
The word has assumed a negative meaning to such an extent
that the owners of female dogs prefer to make circumlocutions.
They no longer refer to their female dogs as "cagna,"
someone might think they meant their wife, right?
But rather they use often sweeter, slightly modified terms. Ah!?
We censor ourselves, lest someone get the wrong impression.
A third word might surprise you: "ma'am."
How can "ma'am" be negative?
So, if I ask young people about it, they say,
"Yes, 'ma'am' is negative in that, well, one is a young woman,
so she would be a 'Ms,' and calling her 'ma'am' would offend."
But I'll tell you something that is much more subtle.
It has happened to me several times.
There's only one woman in a room full of men.
They're all professionals.
A man enters the room
and addresses the men as "doctor" and the women as "ma'am."
I usually react pretty badly to it.
So, even a word that I really mean in a positive way like "ma'am,"
if used in a certain way, could become,
I'm not saying offensive, but still, at least, annoying for some.
So, you understand that the blacklist is not enough.
A blacklist is not enough, censorship is not enough:
something fundamental is required, which is our intelligence.
Our own reflection is needed, because words are not just words.
Let's turn to something else that words do.
Words bring about actions.
If I am a professor,
I have the power to advance or fail a student.
If I am mayor,
I have the power to marry people.
If I am a doctor,
I have the power to declare a birth or a death.
You know the medical dramas where the person is not dead
until someone, another person in the right role,
has declared the death.
Thus our words become acts.
We make acts all the time.
Think about the supreme act: swearing.
Swearing is a very serious matter.
But does it have actual consequences if I commit perjury?
In fact, no.
But among people, there is a kind of pact,
according to which, if I swear, I think fully about that thing.
I do not swear lightly,
even if in reality we all know that no one will shoot us.
This is the power of words.
So, in a world overloaded with words -
and it is overloaded with them,
we are constantly surrounded by words -
I invite you to do one thing:
to regain the power of the right word.
This is something we can all do.
Because it does not mean learning strange new things.
It means addressing something in which we are all competent,
that of using words,
and using them better.
I'll give you three bits of advice here.
The first: cultivate doubt.
We live in an age that, because of the quantity of information we receive,
gives us the illusion of knowledge.
Of course, knowing is not googling.
Knowing is something much deeper.
So, we, day after day, in any field of knowledge,
need to ask ourselves what the limit of the things we know is.
How little I know.
How little I know about the immensity of information that surrounds me.
And this also applies to language.
Every day, if I know 35,000 words out of a million,
it is not unusual that I come across words that I do not know every day.
And, confronted by these words, I'll feel uncomfortable
because I want certainty in life.
Human beings want certainty.
Changes, things we do not know,
scare us.
But, at least in the linguistics field, it is easy to solve the problem:
I use a dictionary.
Today it is even easier, I can google it,
but, ultimately, it's the same thing:
I meet a word that I do not know.
I'll give you an example from January of this year:
"gelicidio" [glazed frost].
"Gelicidio" has caused a lot of trouble.
Many thought that it was a new term, a neologism.
It is a word from 1360,
so it is 700 years old.
And why didn't I know it?
Because every one of us knows just a little part
of the full lexicon that we have at our disposal.
So, the first thing I'm telling you about is doubt that bears fruit,
because the only way to increase our knowledge
is to know not to know.
The moment we are convinced we know everything we need to know,
our ability to learn new things
is diminished.
First thing.
Second.
We can reflect for a moment.
It is really very simple. Why?
Because we have that faculty.
To some extent, we have the illusion
of needing to be constantly on the move, of always being in a rush,
of not having the time to think about things.
But it is not true.
Even when when we want to make a post on Facebook,
for example,
we can always stop 10 seconds
and think about what we truly want to say.
Let’s take back the luxury of thinking about
what we are going to put, say to the world around us,
that microparticle of information.
Let’s think about it a little more.
It is not difficult.
And then a third piece of advice that's just as simple.
When we’re not competent, and we do not know things,
something that can happen very often,
we can always choose silence.
We live in a society that habitually polarizes everything.
Well, instead, sometimes, you can choose not to say anything.
Also, because, if I say things that are wrong,
we need to remember that what we have typed
is first and foremost going to stay put.
It will remain attached to us,
and will contribute to the creation of our online personality.
Do we really want to say this thing
that then stays there, attached to us,
like some kind of scrap paper we have thrown into the world?
So, as you can see, these things are simple:
doubt, reflection, silence.
Ultimately, it is silly,
because in some way they are three requests
that are not exactly about language,
but they are of which language is consequential.
At the end of all this, I’d like to point something out to you.
These skills do not come immediately.
A lot of work is needed.
It’s what I call "the need to be farmers of the language."
Why, what do farmers do?
Maybe you know:
farmers commit themselves day in and day out,
they never get tired,
they know that from the moment the field is plowed
until the moment the plant grows,
a lot of time passes, a great amount of time passes,
and they must put in a lot.
So, I summarize it like this:
the result of all the fatigue,
sweat, consistency, resilience, and confidence in what they do,
is this little plant here,
that finally punctured the asphalt.
We don't necessarily need to be sponges,
maybe we’re more like asphalt,
but knowledge is even more resilient than we are,
and if we give it a chance, it could end up like this.
Thank you.
(Applause)